Atacama Lithium: US$3 Billion Plan to End Freshwater Use

The future of Atacama lithium may be decided less by how much metal Chile can pump than by how much water it can keep in the ground. Novandino Litio — the joint venture that binds state copper giant Codelco to producer SQM — has filed a plan worth about US$3 billion, named Salar Futuro, to run the world’s most prized lithium brine field out to 2060. Its central promise is a technology bet: direct lithium extraction that returns depleted brine to the aquifer rather than leaving it to evaporate.

A US$3 billion bid to run Atacama to 2060

Novandino Litio, the operating company created by the Codelco–SQM partnership, has submitted an environmental impact study for a project it calls Salar Futuro. The filing, lodged with Chile’s environmental assessment system (SEIA) in mid-2026, carries an estimated price tag of about US$3 billion, according to Mining.com and BNamericas.

The plan’s headline aim is continuity. Current permits authorise brine extraction at the Salar de Atacama to roughly 2030; Salar Futuro would extend and reshape the operation through 2060. That is a three-decade horizon for a deposit that ranks among the world’s largest and lowest-cost sources of the battery metal.

The timing is deliberate. Chile is rebuilding its lithium industry around a public–private model in which Codelco takes a controlling stake in the Atacama operation from 2031, with SQM staying on as an operating partner. Salar Futuro is the vehicle meant to carry that arrangement into the next generation.

The wider backdrop is demand. Lithium underpins the batteries in electric vehicles and grid storage, and Chile has long been one of the metal’s largest suppliers. Extending Atacama’s life to 2060 is a bet that the world will still want the salt flat’s output decades from now, and that Chile can produce it on terms its own citizens will accept.

Why water, not tonnage, is the story

For years the debate over Atacama lithium was framed in tonnes. Salar Futuro shifts the axis to water. The salt flat sits in one of the driest places on Earth, and the conventional way of producing lithium there — pumping brine into vast ponds and letting the sun evaporate it — consumes volumes of liquid that the desert does not replace.

Researchers estimate that producing a single tonne of lithium carbonate the traditional way evaporates on the order of half a million litres of brine. Multiplied across decades of output, that adds up to what hydrologists describe as an effectively irreversible drawdown from the basin.

That is the pressure point Salar Futuro is designed to answer. Novandino is not primarily selling more lithium; it is selling a promise to make each tonne with far less water taken permanently out of the system. In a region where lagoons and flamingo habitat depend on a delicate balance, the distinction is everything.

The technology bet: direct extraction and reinjection

At the centre of the plan is direct lithium extraction, or DLE. Rather than relying on open-air evaporation, DLE uses chemical or membrane processes to pull lithium selectively from the brine. The depleted brine that remains is then reinjected into the aquifer instead of being left to evaporate away.

Novandino has paired DLE with forced evaporation and membrane steps in a hybrid design, and has proposed a transition of about seven years during which the operation would progressively cut its use of continental freshwater until it is eliminated, substituting water recovered in the process.

If it works at scale, reinjection is the difference between an operation that mines water and one that borrows it. That single engineering choice is what the company is asking regulators, and communities, to believe in.

DLE is not yet proven at the volumes Atacama demands, and cost, energy use and recovery rates remain open questions. The environmental study is where those claims will be stress-tested rather than simply asserted.

Novandino will also have to show that reinjection does not simply move the problem, for instance by altering brine chemistry or pressure in ways that harm the aquifer over time. Those are the second-order questions a rigorous review is meant to surface.

The social licence question

The Salar de Atacama is not empty land. It is the territory of the Lickanantay, or Atacameño, peoples, whose communities have for years contested the effect of brine and freshwater extraction on lagoons, vegetation and the fragile hydrology of the basin.

In the Atacameño view, often expressed in consultations and litigation, the salt flat’s brine and its freshwater are part of a single living system; disturb one and you disturb the whole. Long-running disputes over aquifers such as the Monturaqui–Negrillar–Tilopozo system have fed a broader distrust of company monitoring data.

This is why reinjection is as much a political proposition as a technical one. Salar Futuro must pass through environmental review and Indigenous consultation, and its fate is likely to turn on whether affected communities accept that returning depleted brine to the ground genuinely protects the water they depend on.

Trust is the scarce resource. Years of disputes over monitoring data and lagoon levels mean that promises alone will not settle the question; communities will look for independent verification and enforceable commitments. For Novandino, winning that argument matters as much as proving the engineering, because a permit granted over community objections would be a fragile kind of victory.

The Codelco–SQM alliance under scrutiny

Salar Futuro is also the first big test of the alliance itself. Codelco, the state copper miner, and SQM, the incumbent lithium producer, agreed to jointly operate the Atacama concession, an arrangement that gives the state majority control while keeping SQM’s operational know-how in place.

The joint venture inherits both SQM’s production base and its baggage: a history of environmental scrutiny and community mistrust that a change of ownership does not erase. A smooth environmental approval would validate the model; a contested one would expose its fault lines.

For Chile, the stakes reach beyond one company. The government has staked its national lithium strategy on the idea that the state can capture more value while doing less harm. Readers following the country’s mining policy will recognise the pattern: technology and social licence, not reserves, are now the binding constraint.

What regulators will weigh

Chile’s SEIA process is lengthy, and a project of this scale can spend years in assessment, with rounds of questions, community consultation and possible conditions. Approval is not a formality, and the water claims will draw the closest reading.

Regulators will look for evidence that reinjection does what Novandino says, that freshwater use really falls to zero on the promised timeline, and that monitoring will be independent and transparent. Investors, meanwhile, will watch whether DLE can deliver the recovery rates and costs that justify a US$3 billion outlay.

The outcome will ripple outward. As other producers across Latin America weigh similar technology, Atacama is fast becoming the reference case for whether desert lithium can be produced without draining the desert.

This is reporting, not investment advice. Confirm current figures with official sources before acting.

More: Chile news in English, every day from The Rio Times.

Related reading

• Chile’s lithium strategy and the Codelco–SQM deal
• How direct lithium extraction is reshaping the salt flats
• Water, mining and Indigenous rights in the Atacama
• Latin America’s lithium triangle: who produces what

Sources: Chile’s SEIA.

This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief

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